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Nothing personalizes the appearance of your Mac desktop more than your choice of the desktop picture. Even the early Mac OS versions facilitated a degree of desktop pattern customization, but since the release of Mac OS 8, users have been able to use almost any sort of photograph or graphic image, PICT, GIF, JPEG, etc., as a background for their desktops. You can either choose to have your image cover the whole Desktop area, or tile smaller images to fill the screen.

The Mac OS comes with a selection of desktop patterns, pictures, and photos, which are stored in the Appearance folder inside your System folder.

In order to change your Desktop picture in OS 8.5 through 0S 9.2.1, open the Appearance Control Panel from the submenu in the Apple Menu, and click on the Desktop tab. A dialog will appear that allows you to choose and manipulate your Desktop appearance.

First, you need to remove the picture that already appears on your Desktop, if any, by clicking the Remove Picture button. This does not destroy or erase the photo from your hard drive; just deselects it as your Desktop picture. Also, whatever Desktop Pattern is selected in the scrolling Patterns menu will remain underlying the desktop picture, which, when activated, covers the Desktop Pattern.

To select a new Desktop picture, click the Place Picture button (formerly the Remove Picture button). An open file dialog will appear, allowing you to navigate to find graphics files anywhere on your hard drive, but it's probably best to store any images you want to use for Desktop pictures in the Photos folder in the Desktop Pictures folder in the Appearance folder in the System folder. Got that?

There are also several other desktop image categories stored in the Desktop Pictures folder that you may want to experiment with, such as 3-D Graphics, Ensemble Pictures, and Convergency. Not my cup of tea, but to each his own. You can preview the provided photos in the Photos folder or wherever by clicking the Show Preview button, which will make the selected photo appear in the Preview window of the open file dialog box. You can also drag any compatible graphics file directly into the preview window to display it there.

When you find the picture you want in the open file dialog, click Choose, and it will appear in the mini Desktop window of the Desktop dialog box, allowing you to see how well it fits the Desktop. If the picture still looks good to you, click Set Desktop, and the picture will be applied to the Desktop.

If you choose one of the sample photos that comes with the Mac OS, it will of course fit the Desktop perfectly (note that if you have a Titanium PowerBook or a 22" Cinema Display, you will need specially proportioned desktop pictures in order to cover the extra-wide screen area), but an alternate photo may not. If the picture doesn't fit properly in the preview window, you can adjust it using the pop-up menu directly beneath the Remove/Place Picture button, which gives you several options.:

• Tile on screen - This selection makes a smaller image repeat itself until the screen is covered.

• Center on screen - Not surprisingly centers your photo on the desktop.

• Scale to screen - This one adjusts your picture to fit the screen as closely as possible without distorting its proportions, so that its largest dimension just fills the screen. This may leave gaps with the underlying desktop pattern showing at the top and bottom or sides.

• Fill Screen - This one will reduce, enlarge, compress, or stretch your graphic as necessary to fill the entire screen. This will be more successful with some images than others.

• Position automatically - This selection offers basically the same function as Scale to Screen.

Of course, you don't have to have a Desktop photo. The Appearance Control Panel, as noted, supplies a comprehensive selection of desktop patterns, or you can create your own and apply it by clicking on the Pattern list in the Desktop dialog and choosing Paste from the Edit Menu.

For Mac OS 8 and 8.1, there is no Appearance Control Panel, but you can set and manipulate Desktop pictures in much the same way as described above using the eponymously named Desktop Pictures Control Panel.

In OS X, choose Finder Preferences from the Finder's Application Menu and click the Select Picture button to bring up an open dialog box. Use it to find the desired picture on your hard drive and then double click on the picture's name in the open dialog and it will appear on the Desktop, or smaller pictures will be tiled to fill the area. If you single click a selection, it will appear in the Preview window. Click Choose when you find image you like.